Beyond Recognition
by trufflemores
Summary: 4.01 speculation. When Barry comes back, he's not the same person he was when he left. Iris is determined to find out why.


Barry draws, and draws, and draws.

Iris watches Barry flit back and forth between the transparent boards, marker scratching away quietly. He doesn't look away as she wanders around the room, examining him and his work. Cisco and Cindy left the Cortex hours ago, Wally and Jesse are off-world, and Dad won't expect her home tonight.

It's just them, two lone wolves, separated by the invisible Everything between them.

Eventually, she halts right in front of him, standing on the opposite side of the board. She looks right at those lightning yellow eyes as they slide across the board. Without meaning to, his gaze meets hers, and he blinks. Just once, slowly.

"You're not there anymore," she tells him quietly. His shoulders tense; his eyes dim to ember-red. "You're home, Barry."

He shakes his head and returns to his work, sketching away with agitated fury. She steps around the board and he pauses again, marker still pressed to the surface. It's an unfinished circle. One of hundreds. His shoulders tense, his eyes glow, and he does not look at her, staring like he will burn a hole through the wall before he will acknowledge her presence. She says, "This is a message."

He nods once. It's progress. "Who is it for?" she presses.

When he doesn't answer, she reaches out and takes the marker, capping it. He doesn't resist her, but he also doesn't answer. Refusing to be deterred, she takes his hands in both of hers and turns him so he is facing her. For all that strength, he's strangely complacent – intensely inclined to follow, as if she is the mover of the Earth.

The marker rests between their clasped right hands. He doesn't say a word, looking right at her. She says, "Come home to me."

He stares at her, unblinking. Squeezing his palms, she insists, "Come home to me, Barry."

He glances at the board and then at her. He blinks again just once. It's agonizingly close to acknowledgement, but there's nothing in his eyes that speaks of recognition. Just an unearthly quiescence; a nonchalance so complete it defies definition. To say he doesn't care stretches the truth; he doesn't have the capacity to care is more accurate.

Still, she can't leave him, not when he's here, not when they hauled him from that far-away Nowhere to be back at this place and time. In the Speed Force, he could have been adrift forever, _free_ forever, but they didn't let that happen. They brought him back.

Iris' eyes burn. She steps forward, crowding his space. With reflexive remembrance he folds her into his arms. She hugs him tightly and lets her tears press against his shoulder; he holds onto her like she is the last tether to his sanity. His cheek rests against her temple, and underneath hers, his chest swells and sinks slowly.

The reality of his physicality – here and now and not a dream – hits her hard. She crushes his shirt in her fists and sobs, angry and exhausted and alone. He doesn't move, but there's a soft almost-purr in his chest, and it absorbs her grief like a setting sun.

She whispers, "You can go home," because it is easier to let him go than it is to hold onto his mirage, the echo of the person she once loved; it is easier to accept that he never came home than it is to concede that he might not _want_ to; it is easier to bury her dreams than watch them decay. She slides a hand up to the back of his neck and squeezes it, feeling the lightning-heat that is so like home to her, and insists, "You can go."

Slowly – so unlike the rogue Flash they found, faster-than-they'd-ever-seen-him, almost too fast to catch – he steps away. He looks down at her, and she knows there are tears on her face, but she doesn't care. There's no resentment, no desperation; that was bled out of her over the course of six months, six months sleeping anywhere but their bed, six months pretending her future husband wasn't dead, six months leading and never looking back for her lost partner. She just wants him to be happy – and this version, this mute and wild version of him, can't be.

They brought him here, but they didn't bring _Barry_ home.

They broke into the Speed Force and stole something that was neither human nor beast but Other entirely, something that could carry Barry's warmth and presence but not his soul. They took something that didn't ever belong to them, fully, but let them into its life by association. She was part of Barry's life – and so she is part of the Speed Force's.

They caught the Ghost, but there's still no sign of Barry.

It clicks.

"Take me to him," she commands, and the Speed Force blinks golden-yellow eyes at her and cocoons her in an embrace. She buries her face in his chest and holds on, aware of the rest of the world disappearing around them but not daring to face it. He keeps both hands on her back, and she knows it is the Speed Force and still clings to him like he is Barry, _her_ light, her keeper in this dark space, and then he backs away, and she cannot avoid looking at the darkness.

Thunder growls in the distance. Iris' breath catches in her chest, but Barry merely looks around, clearing his throat. "We do not speak much," he apologizes. "Not with … mortals."

Blink, and he's gone. In his place, a bright silver fox curls its tail around its paws. It Is No Reflection Of Your Kind, it explains. There Is No Need To Speak Here.

Blink, and it's Barry again, spreading his arms and inviting, "Welcome to our home."

Iris looks slowly towards the left and any trace of Barry disappears, consumed by the pitch-darkness. It's not the storm she first saw when Cisco brought her "into the Speed Force" two years ago; rather, it's an inky, prehistoric emptiness, like the time before the Big Bang. _Let there be light_ has not yet been commanded here.

At the same time, she has the chilling, pervasive, all-consuming sense that the light has already come and gone here, and that this is all there is left of the universe she knows and loves and lives in.

A beginning and an end, entombed in darkness.

She pivots back and sees the silver fox; away, and nothing at all. We Can Be Anything, the Speed Force explains when she looks again and sees a wolf cocking its head at her, golden yellow eyes the sole constant. Or Nothing At All. And it vanishes before her eyes, leaving her completely alone.

"Where's Barry?" she asks.

There's a low crackle of thunder behind her, and Iris turns sharply and –

An electrifying pulse of fear rockets down her spine, paralyzing her. Standing before her, a black-clad speedster with white eyes stares at her, watching her like she is both familiar and new, the First Person, Before or After.

The silver fox slinks around her and sits beside the Black Flash, announcing, The Darkness Is Kinder Together.

A trace of Barry seems to superimpose itself over that terrifying form: she sees his eyes dim a moment, human hazel just visible, before flaring white again. "This is our home," he announces in a deep, ethereal tone. "Where else would we go?"

It takes her a long moment to rally the courage to speak. "Maybe it is," she permits, both Speed Force and Black Flash watching her intently, "and maybe you should stay." Stepping forward, ignoring the repulsive instinct at the sight of Death Material, she says, "But this isn't the only place you call home."

The Black Flash regards her with his shoulders back, and she approaches with the same fearlessness, until they are merely feet apart, instead of centuries. The closer she draws, the younger he seems – red emerges from the black shroud of his suit; the scar on his face disappears. Younger, human features sneak into the outlines confined by his cowl. "This isn't the only time you belong," she continues, and another step erases another year, another millennium, from this undying speedster.

"My time isn't perfect," she says. Pausing just outside arm's reach, staring up at that dark fiend still shadowing her Barry, she finishes, "But it was yours." Extending a hand takes all the courage she possesses, for she knows in her soul that if she touches him, she will never walk the mortal realm again. "The darkness is kinder together," she echoes simply. "My time – my world – is still yours."

She steps forward until it is almost impossible not to touch him – and were he breathing, she already would have – and sees her Barry, as youthful and familiar as ever, somewhere deep in time, somewhere she will never truly know, a somewhere she is not destined to live to.

Reaching out, she closes her fingers around his.

. o .

Blink, and they're back, and Barry is looking at her with wonder and horror, tears trickling down his face, his still unshaven face, and for-all-appearances he is the same person she brought to the Speed Force, and yet his embrace alone is immediate, profound proof that he isn't.

"Iris, _Iris_ ," he whispers, like her name is sacred, like her existence is sacred, holding her against him and shaking. Dazed, she can only hold onto him, marveling at the Cortex, at his presence, at _Barry_.

"I got lost," he babbles, still speaking mostly to the top of her head, "I'm sorry, I'm so – I'm sorry."

She pulls back and cradles his head in her hands. "Barry," she says, and he silences, looking at her with warm, hazel eyes. His lips curl up at the edges and she finds herself mirroring him even as tears form in her own eyes. "Oh, my God."

And then she leans up and kisses him and she knows, she knows, she knows that it's her Barry, back at last.

Turns out the wait? Was worth every second.

. o .

Somewhere in that Ever-Unchanging-Darkness, a silver Speed-fox roams time, awaiting its Black Flash to return, patient, immortal, enduring.


End file.
